


Ouroboros

by Lise



Category: Wheel of Time - Robert Jordan
Genre: Age of Legends, Character Study, Gen, Introspection, Non-Linear Narrative, POV Second Person, Past Character Death, nihilistic villains are the best
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-16
Updated: 2019-12-16
Packaged: 2021-02-26 01:59:58
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,571
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21825553
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lise/pseuds/Lise
Summary: "What if some day or night a demon were to steal after you into your loneliest loneliness and say to you: 'This life as you now live it and have lived it, you will have to live once more and innumerable times more' ... Would you not throw yourself down and gnash your teeth and curse the demon who spoke thus?" -Freidrich Nietzsche,The Gay Science
Comments: 8
Kudos: 22
Collections: Yuletide 2019





	Ouroboros

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Tedronai](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tedronai/gifts).



> One of your requests was for the immediate aftermath of Ishamael's resurrection as Moridin, which was where I started with this; that's not quite where it ended up. Bits and pieces of your other prompts ended up in here too, briefly.
> 
> I hope you enjoy the result.
> 
> With thanks to [maybemalapert](https://archiveofourown.org/users/laconicisms/pseuds/maybemalapert) for the swift and thorough beta, and to the mods of Yuletide for arranging this exchange every year and making it run so smoothly. Without further ado, and happy Yuletide!

There is no beginning or end to the Wheel of Time.

You who had been Elan Morin Tedronai, lifetimes upon lifetimes ago, knew this. You had studied it, after all; mulled over the nature of eternity, the consequence of cyclical time, the weaving and unweaving and reweaving of the pattern, nothing truly new, only rearrangements of the same threads.

There was neither beginning nor end to the spinning of the Wheel. And yet in all the natural world, decay was inevitable. Entropy was inevitable. All things fell apart in time, all things _died._ It must be, you had thought, that eventually, even if it took an unfathomable amount of time, an inconceivable number of cycles, eternity itself would end.

And the instrument of that ending?

Theory suggested that it must exist, but it was Mierin’s experiments that gave proof to theory. They gave it names, and perhaps that naming gave it form outside of what it was: not just death, but annihilation. The negation of everything. Supposedly it was _released,_ but you thought it had always been there, side-by-side with the Light.

Your colleagues at the time did not like your monograph. _Nihilistic,_ they said.

No. _Inevitable._

Eternity was so very, very, long. 

* * *

There was an irony in the fact that you had turned to the Shadow with the certainty that in the Great Lord was an end to the endless cycle, only to be brought back after your own end - returned, still bound, to the Pattern, by the very being who would eventually unravel it. Lews Therin killed you in Tear, and the Great Lord brought you back in a new body, with a new name. 

_Death._ The Great Lord did not have much of a sense of humor, but you thought it might be a joke. Though you were not particularly entertained.

You weren’t sure if it was a punishment for failure or a second chance. The Great Lord did not typically give second chances, but the gift of the True Power did not suggest punishment. Perhaps it was a test. 

(The True Power. Agony; ecstasy. Both at once, devouring.)

Ultimately, it did not matter the reason for your resurrection: your task was the same.

It was time the Wheel broke, and you would be a part of guiding it to its breaking.

If only that thought gave you more pleasure.

* * *

You were deeply proud of your presentation. 

It was a meticulously built thing, walking them down the same road you had walked, taking them through the same steps. You watched their faces, the reactions of growing disquiet and discomfort, and in some faces something else. Doubt. Uncertainty. 

Curiosity. 

When you closed your speech with the declaration of your new allegiance, the uproar was tremendous: a great rippling wave that began as confusion and rose toward anger. 

Your eyes remained on Barid, standing still with his head cocked slightly to the side and a faint smile on his lips. Like something you’d said was amusing. You and Barid had never been friends, but you offered a faint smile in return just the same.

It took only days for you to have a new name, the first of many: Ishamael. Betrayer of Hope. Whose hope, they didn’t say, though you could only assume it was their own. Fool’s hope born of ignorance and fear. 

You were already beyond it touching you, the insult that was no doubt meant by denying you the name of your birth. The truth was that you were changed, transformed, no longer what you had been - as distant from Elan Morin Tedronai as you were from Mosk the Giant. You were something else, now; less man than instrument. 

You were the first, but not the last, of those who called themselves the Chosen and others called Forsaken. The others joined for their own reasons - jealousy, resentment, personal gain, frustration with the limits of conventional morality. 

With them it was always _victory;_ they none of them quite seemed to grasp that it wasn’t glorious triumph that their master would bring about, but an end to everything. 

You decided not to try to explain it.

* * *

Your head was still ringing when you retreated from Shadar Logoth into the bubble of dream you had crafted for yourself. You did not fully understand what had happened, and were even less certain what the consequences might be.

It was the first time you had come face to face with al’Thor (al’Thor or Lews Therin? What difference was there? Did it matter?) since your reembodiment in this new flesh. You had half wondered if you would be recognized - if al’Thor would somehow sense you, bound together as you were. If he would know, when he looked you in the eyes, the soul behind them. 

You almost hoped for it, that recognition. Inconvenient though it would be at this juncture. 

But all you saw was bafflement and incomprehension. _Who are you,_ he asked, as though the two of you were not as you are, equal and opposite. 

_Who are you._ You smiled to yourself, in the safety of solitude. _A more complicated question than you know, that._

You weren’t certain who you were, anymore. How to properly answer that question. You supposed it was a good thing that you didn’t have to.

It was a strange feeling, knowing that you had saved al’Thor’s life; further, guided him in defeating Sammael. Not that you particularly cared for - or about - Sammael, and there were plans in the works that would be severely disrupted by al’Thor’s death. But it was still a strange feeling. You turned it over and over in your head, examining it, but drew no conclusions.

You shook it away. There were other matters that needed attending to; you could feel the pull drawing you back to Shayol Ghul, and that was hardly a summons that you could delay in answering.

Al’Thor could - would - wait.

* * *

They called it a seal. As though the Great Lord was a leak that could simply be patched away. 

They paid the price for it, though. The taint on _saidin;_ the madness that tore the world apart. 

The others were bound themselves. Trapped in a prison outside time. But you, it seemed, were not. At least not properly. The world was still yours to touch, and you were there to cure Lews Therin’s madness and watch him destroy himself. Selfish. 

It would be a long wait until he was reborn, and the cycle came around again.

But you would be here when it did. Waiting, woven in and out like the tide, cast into the world and drawn back again, over and over and over-

Eternity.

You played your games. Fought your wars. Manipulated kings.

Lost yourself.

Whatever there was left to lose. Whatever was _yourself_ to begin with. 

When you first spoke to the red-haired _ta’averen_ in his dreams, he believed that you were the Great Lord yourself, and you let him believe it, and perhaps - sometimes, in fragments - believed it yourself.

* * *

You were kneeling on the black and jagged rocks before a black-mottled lake of molten rock, staring up at a sickly sky swirling ceaselessly overhead. You knew this place, and well, like the power that suffused the air itself, acrid and searing as acid, exhilarating as a long fall.

You remembered fire. You remembered death, oblivion. But of course there is no grave beyond your Lord’s reach.

Curiously, your head was clearer now than it had been. You knew what you were. And more precisely, what you were not.

“Great Lord,” you said. “I am your servant.”

YOUR NAME IS MORIDIN.

Rocking back as though that voice was a blow - it felt like one - you caught your breath and bowed your head. “Yes,” you said. It was better to keep things simple. Grand pronouncements, flattering words...they had always seemed meaningless. Like ants trying to flatter a mountain.

YOU WILL SERVE ME BETTER THIS TIME. It wasn’t a question, and left no room for argument. Not that you would argue if it had. 

“Yes.”

REACH OUT, MORIDIN. TOUCH THE TRUE POWER.

Not something you would have done eagerly, not in this place, but you did not hesitate to touch the True Power once bid. You opened yourself to that scouring, burning thing, and thought you might have screamed, but though it felt as though it would it did not annihilate you. Black flecks flooded your vision as it raged through you, its purity like the purity of flame.

YOU ARE MY INSTRUMENT, your Lord said. GO.

You released the True Power with an aching reluctance, forced yourself to your feet, and walked up the path back to the world outside.

Standing under a sky now black and grey, still and heavy, you started to laugh.

* * *

You did not move after al’Thor left your dream, but sat and thought about cycles, and patterns, and inevitability.

 _"You were always so full of thoughts, Elan._ ”

 _And you so empty of them,_ you might have said, but hearing that name so casually in al’Thor’s mouth had knocked you briefly askew. There was no one living who used that name anymore, and certainly not with such familiarity. 

It was unexpected. And not entirely welcome.

You stared into the fire that burned without warmth. You were tired, or al’Thor was tired, or perhaps the both of you were. The time was drawing close.

The last time. The end of time. 

Hopefully.


End file.
